Rose Galbraith (3 page)

And so she went along the corridor from her little cubicle to the deck, remembering well how she and her mother had traced the way again and again with a pencil along the diagram of the ship. She arrived just in time to get a place next to the rail where she could look down to the dock. A great throng were standing there, and many more were hurrying down the gangplank to mingle with them and turn to look back at their friends on the boat.

Rose looked down on that cheering throng and couldn't see a face she had ever seen before. Of course. She hadn't expected to. But it gave her a most desolate feeling. A quick fear came that she might be going to cry again. She shouldn't have come out here, of course. She might have known it would only make her homesick to see all these happy people going off to have a good time, with so many to see them off. And she hadn't anybody in the world to say good-bye to her!

Of course those relatives to whom she was going might be kind enough to welcome her when she got to Scotland, even sorry to see her go if she ever could come back again, but they didn't know her yet. She had never so much as seen them; it probably would not matter much to them if she never got there.

Well, she must stop such thoughts if she didn't want to be disgraced right here among a lot of strangers. She would try and find something amusing to look at down on the wharf. There was a man holding a little child in his arms, and the child was shouting funny little farewells to some playmate who was sailing. She looked at the bright face of the little playmate near the rail beside her and almost envied her joy. A pleasant looking man and woman were with her. She wasn't going off on a journey alone.

She turned her attention to a group off at the right. They were saying good-bye, happily.

“Now, Herbert, don't you and Gladys turn the house upside down while we're gone off pleasuring,” admonished the pretty white-haired mother, obviously talking to a handsome son whose wife was bidding the father-in-law good-bye.

She turned sharply to the left, and there were more people saying last things to dear ones. On every hand everyone but herself had someone who had cared enough to come down and bid farewell. It brought a great lump into her throat, and she was having another struggle with her tears. How silly! Tears! Because there wasn't anybody, not
any
body to say good-bye to her.

Of course there had been people in Shandon to whom she might have paid farewell visits, and they would have been kind. Maybe would have given her little gifts or something to remember them by, but she just hadn't had the courage to go around and hear them tell how they had loved her mother and how sad it was that she was gone. It was her own fault that she had said good-bye to so few. There was Harry Fitch. If she had given him half a chance, he would have offered to bring her all the way up to New York in his car and see her off. He would have brought his sister Mary along perhaps, or maybe John Peters, or that silly Fannie Heathrow. They would have stood down there on the dock and yelled things she couldn't hear, and laughed and carried on the way that crowd down there near the man with the child were doing, and she would have been mortified to death and been only too glad to sail away into oblivion out of their reach. Oh, she ought to be glad there were no people like that down on the wharf to see her off!

So she tried to smile, and most unexpectedly there came great, fat, hot tears plunging down her cheeks and splashing on her hand on the railing. Someone who was passing, a young man in well-cut tweeds, paused and looked down at her.

She decided not to look up till he had gone on, because she was just sure another tear was on its way down and would be sure to fall right before him. She mustn't be seen crying, even by a stranger.

So with eyes downcast, she stood there and sighted the neat creases in the tweed trouser legs there just at one side.

But he wasn't moving on. Was he just going to stand there? She lifted an investigating glance and met a puzzled gaze looking down at her. And then a friendly voice asked in an astonished tone:

“Why, isn't this Rose Galbraith? It surely is! What are you doing here? Not leaving the country, are you?”

Then she looked up with a radiant face. “Oh,” she said with a great relief in her glance, “why, it's Gordon McCarroll! I'm so glad you spoke to me! I was just feeling awfully forlorn because everybody else seemed to have someone around who knew them, and I didn't have
any
one to even say good-bye to.”

Rose looked up with her lashes all dewy and gave a shamed shy little smile, like a child that was embarrassed.

The young man looked down at her with a kind smile.

“Say, now, that's tough. I certainly am glad I happened along! The company sent me here with some papers for an Englishman who is sailing on this boat, and I didn't dream I'd see anybody I knew. Say, are you going over for the summer? Just a trip? My! I wish I were going! I love the water, and maybe we could get really acquainted. But I've got a regular job now and haven't any time for playing around in Europe. I suppose you'll have a great time. Where did you say you were going?”

“I'm going to Scotland,” said Rose soberly, almost sadly.

“But say! Aren't you thrilled? I've never been to Scotland, and I've always been crazy to go, ever since I read those books we had in lit class. I liked them so much I read a lot of others too. I want to see Loch Lomond and Loch Katrine, and all the others. But you don't seem very happy about it. Aren't you anticipating a good time?”

Rose dropped her gaze for an instant and drew a deep trembling sigh, with just a faint glimmer of a smile on her lips as she looked up.

“I'm not feeling very happy about it just now,” she said, drawing a deep quick breath to keep the tears back, “because you see, Mother and I were going together. It is Mother's native land, and she was so happy to be taking me back there to show me everything. But just last week she went home to heaven to live.”

“Oh!” said the young man with a great gentleness in his voice. “Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't know. And now it is going to be very hard for you.”

Rose struggled to answer, but instead two great tears swelled out and rolled down her cheeks, and she could only lift her tear-drenched eyes to his face for an instant's apology and then look down again. Suddenly the young man reached out both his hands and took her small trembling hands in his.

“I am so very, very sorry,” he said tenderly, and as she lifted her eyes again she met a deeply sympathetic glance. “I know how hard it must be for you,” he said, “I have a very dear mother myself.”

She flashed a look that was half a smile, yet full of sudden sorrow.

“I thought you would have a mother like that,” she said shyly.

There was an answering glow in his eyes and his fingers pressed hers again as they still held them lightly.

“Thank you,” he said appreciatively. Then after an instant of quiet he asked, “And now, who are you with?”

“Just myself,” she said with a sad little smile.

“Oh, that's too bad,” he said sympathetically. “I wish there were somebody on board I knew to whom I could introduce you. But you'll get acquainted.”

“Perhaps,” she said wistfully. “But I guess I don't get to know people easily. That was why I was glad to have you speak to me. It seemed so strange and lonely here.”

“I'm glad I was here!” he said with a sunny smile, and then his handclasp gave a quick close pressure, and it was not till then that either of them realized that he was still holding her hands. Their eyes suddenly met and they laughed, a happy little friendly laugh. What would people think about it? It didn't occur to them. Other people about them were doing the same thing. Husbands and wives, brothers and sisters, parents and children, lovers, who had a right to be holding hands. They were only schoolmates. Yet because of her need and his nearness, it seemed quite right for her hands to be lying in his in this pleasant, protected, comforting way.

Then suddenly out of the melee of laughter and tears and farewells came the screeching of the siren and the voice of the ship's official, calling, “All ashore that's going ashore! Last call!”

People all about gave a moan and started away from the rail, making for the exit, leaving Rose and Gordon in a little space by themselves. Farewell kisses and laughter and last words were in the air, and Rose realized that her friend was going! In a moment more she would be standing here alone again, but she would have his friendly words to remember, and his smile, his kindliness, the warm clasp of his strong hands on hers.

Then came another warning whistle.

“I must go!” he said. “I'm sorry. But—we are friends, aren't we? And—you will be coming back, won't you? When?”

“Oh, I don't know,” she said sadly.

“Oh, but where are you going? I must have your address!”

She murmured the name of the little Scottish town to which she was going. Her hands were still in his clasp.

“Have you friends there?”

“Yes, my uncle, John Galbraith. It's Kilcreggan.”

“Write me, please, as soon as you land, and again when you reach where you're staying. I shall be anxious to know how the trip went. Will you?”

“Yes,” she breathed shyly, “if you want me to.”

“I certainly do!” he said fervently.

“Last call!” came the echo from below.

Suddenly he stooped and laid his lips on hers in a warm, friendly kiss. “Good-bye!” he said earnestly. With another lingering pressure of her hands he let them go and hurried away.

Then, just at the head of the steps, he flung back and pressed a card in her hand.

“My present address,” he said breathlessly. “Don't forget to write at once!”

And then he was gone, so swiftly and so fully that his presence seemed almost like something that had not been. Yet she still felt the warmth of his handclasp on her hands, the thrill of his good-bye kiss on her lips, and her cheeks were glowing with the memory.

R
ose stood for several minutes searching before she could find him in that crowd waiting down below. The gangplank had been hauled in, and she leaned over the rail and watched breathlessly, searching the throng. Would he perhaps be carried along and have to go back on the pilot boat? It would be her fault if that should happen to him.

But then her gaze swept the whole side of the ship, and she saw him hurrying off from the other plank where the baggage had been loaded aboard.

All about her were excited voices; confetti and paper ribbons flung over the rail, landing at the feet of friends, or about their necks; handkerchiefs waving; people crying; people laughing and contributing to the general symphony of sound. There were many smart sayings that were never heard above the noise of the boat as it thundered its final farewell to its native land.

But Gordon McCarroll was making his way through the crowd toward the end of the dock that was below the forward deck where he had left her. He looked up and signaled and then smiled with an intent gaze, for all the world as if she were an old friend, the kind of friend she had always in her heart wished she might be.

He was standing there and waiting, as if he had brought her down here and put her aboard. He was taking away that deathly loneliness and making her feel as if she belonged, as if he really cared for her loneliness and wanted to comfort her.

Suddenly she smiled, a radiant glow like sunshine illuminating her face. As they stood there looking at one another during those last seconds, while the ship began to move, it was almost as if words, pleasant assurances, passed between them.

And when at last the ship passed on into the dimness of the blue mist that was the sea, Gordon McCarroll still stood there, looking out at the mere speck the ship had become, thinking amazing thoughts about the little girl who was alone out there on a strange sea! The little girl whom he had known so slightly during the years of their school days together. How she had suddenly become of importance to him! Just the clasp of her hand, the touch of her lips, and something dear had crept into his heart that he could not understand nor fathom. Was that merely a thing of the flesh? No, he thought not. There seemed something almost holy about it.

She had always interested him. Her quaint answers in class had frequently drawn his attention, but he had looked upon her as someone out of an unknown world, for he had never met her elsewhere than in school, and his interest in her had always been but passing. Yet he remembered now that he had often marked the blueness of her eyes, the lights of gold in her hair that curled so naturally about her delicate refined face. And now he had seen in her today a beauty he had never noticed before. Perhaps it had always been there. Only he had not been looking for it, or perhaps the sorrow of her mother's death had touched her with the beauty that sorrow brings. But anyhow, the memory of her face as he had just been looking down into it, stayed with him and intrigued him strongly.

The twilight was settling down over the pearly tints in the sea, and the ship had become a part of the distance, with possibly a mere speck of light stabbing it somewhere to show where it had gone, but he felt sure the little girl was still there by the ship's rail looking back to the land of her birth wistfully, and perhaps, as he was, thinking of their brief farewell. Would he ever see her again? His heart cried out to be assured. Would it be possible for him to do anything about it sometime? When? Would he still wish to do it when the time came?

He turned sadly away and walked the length of the wharf, took a taxi to his hotel, and sat down to think before he went down to get his dinner.

And later, after going out to call on some of his mother's friends, the memory of Rose Galbraith was with him again on his way back to the hotel. Her eyes reflecting the blue of her garments, their beauty holding his thoughts even against his will. He felt again her small soft hands in his, the thrill of her shy lips so sweet against his own. He wasn't a boy who made a practice of kissing girls. Kissing had always seemed a very special sacred thing to him, and now that he was looking at his own action past, and the fact that it was he who had stooped to lay his lips upon hers, he wondered why he had done it. What impulse had stirred him to it? Was it pity for her loneliness? No, not that. There was nothing forlorn about her. Nothing in herself that had claimed such intimacy. She had seemed almost surprised, yet she had yielded her lips. No, it was not pity for her, nor was it promiscuous. It had seemed a fitting sacred thing. As if somehow she suddenly belonged to him and he wanted to kiss her. The farewell gave enough occasion for it, even though they had never been intimate. He was not ashamed of his action. He thought about whether he should tell his mother of it when he went home. He would not be ashamed to tell her. In a way, she would understand. There had always been a sweet intimacy between himself and his mother. But yet he wondered if she would fully understand. He had to think it over carefully and be sure he understood himself before he would feel like bringing it out into the open that way. Maybe it was just something that should be kept in his own heart till time should pass over it and set some kind of a seal upon it. Perhaps it was only a pleasant salutation, a farewell, like a handshake, that would pass into history. Yet that thought was not pleasant, for the memory of that kiss held a strange sweet thrill that was full of beauty and seemed something akin to a heavenly friendship. It was as if suddenly he was aware of having known her a long time.